Louis D

I think the only US retailer still selling any variant of the 55 degree LER line of eyepieces from Long Perng is Orion USA with their Orion Edge-On Planetary. Formerly, there were also the Astro-Tech LER, Smart Astronomy LER, Zhumell Z Series Planetary, and William Optics SPL (and possibly others I've forgotten). I think the Paradigm/Starguiders, Meade HD-60s, and Celestron X-Cel LXs pretty much ate their lunch, so to speak. Of course, the HD-60s are now discontinued themselves.

It always costs more to build a car from new parts than buying a complete one from the factory.

The 24mm version doesn't perform as well as the 30mm version. It's good, but not spectacular. The Altair version is heavier because it uses a stainless steel barrel (lower only?) instead of aluminum as with the APM.

Check for used photo tripods with removable heads and a 3/8" mounting stud. You don't need to buy a brand new and shiny tripod. A beat-up one will generally work just as well. There are also a bunch of slightly up-market Chinese photo tripods that would probably work at a lower cost. I have no experience with them, so I can't make any recommendations about them.

I think any tripod with a 3/8" screw will work. A Manfrotto 055 or equivalent would work fine with it.

Sort of like Jews.

I only ever use the 2" combination mentioned above so I can use my 2" collection at higher powers for funsies.

There are two whole sub-reddits devoted to power/pressure washer porn if you need more fixes.

Try washing your towels with a scoop of OxiClean or its UK equivalent. I've found it helps to remove that last bit of crud that was leaving my towels crunchy when coming out of the dryer.

I can't comment on the merits of the 1.25" GSO 3x, but their 2" 2x ED Barlow is quite good, especially when paired with a TV Panoptic Barlow Interface. The two best traditional Barlows I own are the Orion long Deluxe Barlows made in Japan in the 90s. Both the 2" and 1.25" are about 6 inches long. The 2", though, does cause heavy field cutoff with long focal length 2" eyepieces because it' not telecentric. However, the central area is slightly sharper than the above telecentric combination. I've compared them against the TV 1.25" 2x, Meade 140 2x, and Parks Gold Series (Celestron Ultima) Barlows as well, and these two provide slightly sharper magnification of stars in each case. It's not a huge difference, but it's there. Of course, their long lengths limit their usefulness in scopes that use diagonals.

I would just use a sheet of closed cell foam normally used for packing and insulating. They're light, nonabsorbent, and insulating. That's what I wrapped my hose bibs in during our record freeze in February and had no burst pipe issues.

The Baader Scopos Extremes were an entirely different design from the Baader Hyperion Aspherics. They were larger, heavier, and better corrected. I would stick with the Aero EDs due to them being about as well corrected as the Hyperions while being smaller, lighter, and cheaper.

@Don Pensack in another recent thread about SCT RCs recommended finding a vintage made in Japan Celestron unit to hit that sweet point between price and quality.

Have you ever picked up a fully laden EQ mount including scope and counterweights? Once setup, they're very hard to move around. Can you see the entire sky from a single, convenient location? I can't, so I have to be able to pick-up my scope/mount combo and move it about. Make sure to consider this in your decision making.

Only seems viable at the highest end of the consumer market and in governmental/industrial contracting for either the UK or US.

I think pressure washing might get the job done as well:

In Google English: The new expensive little ones arrived to enrich my binocular setup in the turret. Two pairs of Takahashi MC LE 18 and 7.5 mm. I hope to try them as soon as possible (today it rains of course, until yesterday good weather) hoping that they do not suffer from parallax. So I will be able to give away all the UFF, FF, and WWF and company. At the moment I can say that they are beautiful and compact, of great quality. Excellent transparency, excellent treatments, excellent internal and barrel blackening.

This is the only 102mm ED objective in cell that I've found: TS-Optics 102 mm f/7 FPL53 / Lanthanum Glass Objective in Cell Yes, it's not in the UK.

If you want perfection and are willing to live with a 70 degrees AFOV at 30mm, you can't really go wrong with the 30mm APM UFF for about $250. It's basically flawless edge to edge and light and compact (relatively speaking). It's also sold as the Altair Ultraflat, Meade UHD, and Celestron Ultima Edge. It's the topmost image in the ~30mm group I posted above.

I also got the 40mm Pentax XW for Christmas which is almost as good as the 40mm Meade SWA, but considerable lighter. It's also a bit easier to hold the view in it. They were just reintroduced, albeit at a price probably above your budget.

Not difficult if you have access to a chemical supply house. Just some combination of alcohols, ammonia, distilled water, and detergent. There are a few exotics ingredients in some like Methylchoroisothiazolinon, Methylthiazolinon, and Ethylene glycol hexyl ether; but these can probably be left out.

I would go with an 8mm BST Starguider for the comfortable eye relief and larger apparent field of view. A Plossl at 8mm has fairly tight eye relief.

Yep, beetle-juice is how I've always heard it pronounced in US English. Don't, don't say it three times in a row.

This is true and false for varifocal zooms like the Speers Waler 5-8mm. They literally have a moving Barlow or Smyth lens that changes the focal length, so that much is true. However, they are far from parfocal, but have a constant field of view, so that part is false. True zooms have three sections. The upper section forms the image and never moves, the lowest section acts like a moving Barlow as in a varifocal, while the middle section moves opposite the Barlow as you increase power and maintains some semblance of parfocality. Because that middle section moves to maintain parfocality, the field of view changes drastically from one end to the other.

Note that coma grows linearly with angular field of view, so it's twice as large at 100 degrees as at 50 degrees. I really notice it in my ES-92 eyepieces without a coma corrector even at f/6.